Fair warning: I'm getting a somewhat significant eye surgery tomorrow. It's the second such I've ever undergone, and so I'm simultaneously feeling "aaah!" and "eh, seen it before." But I may be questionably-present online for anywhere from a day to six weeks, depending on how sore and/or light-sensitive my eyes are or aren't in the aftermath.
Overall Spynet response, mostly the winner but with a line-item added to attempt the second-place:
[X][Spynet Response] Publicly Uproot
-[X] Utilize infiltration of the Sypnet to cause those spies who would be most likely to defect on remembering things to do so (both remember and defect), and implicate as many other Woo Clan spies (and their underlying methodology) as possible in the process.
-[X] Selectively activate deliberately suspicious behaviors in the sleeper agents who are genuinely terrible.
-[X] Specifically target for exposure and/or elimination whichever higher-ups are doing the mental modifications with the aim to eliminate as much as possible their ability to keep doing that.
-[X] Make use of Truth and Illusion strategically to both make clear the Woo Clan's guilt and methods to... basically everyone, and obfuscate our own involvement as much as possible by pushing it off onto everyone else who dislikes the Woo Clan (which is everyone)
-[X] Minor note from the other plan: Orchestrate a plot to convince the Woo clan that the security breach is because they have traitors in their midst, manipulating them into destroying themselves as they seek out traitors that don't actually exist.
To hopefully help tide you over, have the not-yet-edited (expect minor tweaks but this is mostly right) result of two Write-ins, combined:
Once upon a time, an Elven Seer looked down at a recovering world. She saw - not everything. But nearly so.
Once upon a time, she looked for a solution. For the world was growing more dangerous with time. Her family was - with great effort - able to keep the worst of the threats at bay, for now.
But the world was - even as it recovered - slowly growing more dangerous with every year.
Not in millennia beyond count had an Apocalypse hit the world and the Elves not been ready to face it. And one must hit, not soon - but with every decade Luck twisted again.
She had charted the courses of countless futures. She had gazed long into the past, and duplicated some of the great Luck manipulation feats, by one part Magical knowledge and three parts looking right at the things.
But it wasn't enough. The Apocalypse could only be delayed, and with every day she knew more surely that the World was not ready.
She had nearly despaired a dozen times, kept hoping by her brother and sister-in-law. She'd searched the archives for ideas. She'd prayed. She'd even screamed, quietly.
But she'd done everything she could think to, checked a thousand times-
Yet on the thousand and first, the world had changed.
For down on the continent of Taschia, a Seed grew. An impossible Seed. A Seed that could Grow scanners on par with pre-Cataclysm Pattern-Tech, in just a few short years.
And it had never been there before.
Oh, it looked inevitable now. Innocent, waving in the sun. Clearly having always been there, to any Eyes that could See.
Rachel Knight knew better.
…Yet there wasn't a single thing out of place. Not a single sign that it was anything but a freak natural occurrence, having slowly been building towards its inevitable existence for centuries.
(But that was all the confirmation Rachel needed. There was exactly one being/party/entity/thing, ever known to Elven High Command, that could and would do this.)
She stared down at the planet for hours, wondering. And then, after asking Adrian to reinforce the anti-scry wards to the absolute max… she prepared to send out "thank you" on unshielded comms.
But was interrupted by a flicker in the corner of her Sight-
Nothing. The moment she checked, everything was clear and unchanged.
Yet Rachel fell down from laughing harder than she'd laughed in centuries. Her brother and sister-in-law looked at her in concern.
"Right. I suppose you two weren't read in, to the Seer Division's secrets, and I'd forgotten about this one. Let me tell you… about The Ghost."
-
Your vision jumps, oh Forest, time pinwheeling. You are Seeing now something almost in the Present. But still The Last Star. Only Rachel stands in the room, looking - straight at you.
She asks, "Do you understand now?" and half-smiles at you. She appears young, by Two Legs standards, yet you feel the weight of a Mind older than your own. Her fingers Weave threads of Magic, carefully keeping some effect from touching you - you don't fully understand what you See, but you carefully memorize it.
And her face turns grim, as the threads twitch, motivated by a force beyond themselves. "Alas," Rachel says, urgently, "you'll soon understand why we don't always answer. Because Connection is a fundamental truth of the universe. And while it's perhaps your greatest strength," pain, "It can be used against you." Agony, "I'm sorry! They don't quite see you, not really," mind tearing asunder, "not now even now. But they never stop attacking us," IT'S INSIDE THE SHIELDS - STOP IT!, "and anything that's linked to us that they can find, even if they can only see it as something linked to us-"
And the Connection broke, as a key piece of the link between Forest and Star ceased.
-
In the physical world, everything seemed fine. Nothing odd-
-Then a Tree exploded into shrapnel. The pieces were on fire. They were also freezing, corrosive, poisonous, sparking lightning, dissolving into putrid pus, and Dead, along with a dozen other attacks.
The Roots were dead, likewise. A small hole sat in the ground where the Tree had stood.
(The Froggy Ninja's Player Tree has died. That roll was a modest critfail, but in context I interpreted it as a very expensive success. Regrowing said Tree properly, repairing significant mental damage, and fixing all other Trees damaged by the side-effects (particularly everything destroyed to quarantine that infectious pus) costs the Forest 10 Resources.)
(On the upside: The Forest now knows more about its origins. Also: The Forest took careful recordings. As expensive as regrowing a Tree will be, this sequence (including the closing attack) expedites learning several Magical Elements.)
